Overvoltages are potentially disruptive factors that can cause damage or destruction in electrical equipment. For this reason, overvoltage protection devices are employed in many areas of electrical engineering, such as in electric power engineering, measurement, control, and regulation technology, information technology, and for transmitting and receiving facilities. Examples of this can be found at www.phoenixcontact.de/ueberspannungsschutz, for example.
Although overvoltage protection devices are designed to withstand high transient current loads, high-energy overvoltage interference can nevertheless overload the protection devices. When an overvoltage pulse occurs, it is possible for the pulse to be properly arrested by the overvoltage protection device although the overvoltage protection device is itself damaged by the event. Then, the overvoltage protection device may no longer function properly at the next occurrence of an overvoltage, and the electrical equipment may suffer damage that the overvoltage protection device is specifically intended to prevent. Consequently, the surge arresters are checked every so often so that the overvoltage protection measures are always effective. To this end, the overvoltage protection devices, which frequently are designed as replaceable modules, are removed from the system by the user and placed in a tester to be tested.
In addition, it is known from DE 10 2004 006,987 B3 to use RFID transponders for state monitoring and logging of overvoltage protection devices in order to permit remote interrogation. In this design, a known error detection unit is used that is read and interrogated through an RFID transponder. In the event of a fault in the overvoltage protection device, the error detection unit is caused to short-circuit or interrupt the transponder antenna circuit or to change the resonant frequency of the transponder antenna circuit.
However, the use of RFID transponders, especially in overvoltage protection devices, entails the risk that the RFID transponders themselves can be destroyed by an electromagnetic pulse. In this context, a problem with the method described in DE 10 2004 006 987 is that in some cases it may not be possible to identify whether the RFID transponder has been destroyed or whether the error detection unit has triggered. It is possible, namely, that the RFID transponder has been destroyed but that the overvoltage protection device itself is still functional. This can result in an unnecessary and costly replacement. In addition, RFID transponders have low electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), which is especially problematic for the stated applications. Apart from this, the use of RFID transponders is complicated and costly, which limits their use to relatively complex equipment.